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Cisco XDR vs IBM Security QRadar comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco XDR
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
20th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
212
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (7th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (4th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (18th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) category, the mindshare of Cisco XDR is 2.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 3.3%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Security QRadar3.3%
Cisco XDR2.0%
Other94.7%
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
 

Featured Reviews

Joseph Houghes - PeerSpot reviewer
flexible reporting and analytics boost data-driven security responses
The feature I appreciate the most about Cisco XDR is the flexibility for a user to be able to create their own reporting and dashboards. I would say I got to stop beta testing myself. I am testing what can be customized the most with it. Being able to ingest all the analytics and make it something that's either meaningful to them or to their own leadership is a big plus. It's not just what the product is at launch; you have the ability to customize and make it useful to your business to actually get real, purposeful information out of just a swamp of data. The features of Cisco XDR have actually benefited the organization significantly by allowing us to do the outputs of specific data and even filtered subsets of the data. We can do the same reporting but only deliver in either reports or dashboards the information about the systems that a specific team is responsible for, or the larger teams that multiple departments or IT silos roll up into. We're basically able to just modify the filters and have the same reports in the same dashboards where it's all the same; 99% of the work is the same.
Mahmoud Younes - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable installation and diverse use cases provide strong value
IBM Security QRadar has some areas for improvement. We have missed some DSM components. We need to customize logs where there is no DSM or connector for certain products. We can integrate but we have missed the DSM, which is the connector to pass logs coming from different applications. For example, with a university customer, we tried onboarding Canvas service. IBM Security QRadar does not support Canvas, so we had to create custom scripts and workarounds to pull logs from Canvas.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Cisco XDR offers threat intelligence and links with the Firewall."
"The features of Cisco XDR benefit my company since time is money. When outages happen and when a customer can't reach the internet, they get agitated. Therefore, the quicker we can mitigate an issue, our customers get happier in a quicker fashion."
"The feature I appreciate the most about Cisco XDR is the flexibility for a user to be able to create their own reporting and dashboards, ingest all the analytics, and make it something meaningful to their business to actually get real, purposeful information out of just a swamp of data."
"Technical support from Cisco is good and very helpful."
"Cisco XDR offers threat intelligence and links with the Firewall."
"The feature I appreciate the most about Cisco XDR is the reliability."
"The feature I appreciate the most about Cisco XDR is the reliability."
"One of my favorite features of Cisco XDR is the automation tool, which saves a lot of time because we can craft these automations and workflows."
"It is incredibly easy to deploy. All the appliances are flexible in the roles that they serve and are all managed the in the same way."
"The most valuable feature currently is security behaviors and the pdf files."
"I think QRadar is stable and currently satisfies my needs."
"Regarding the tool's ability to maintain high-security standards, I rate it ten out of ten."
"Integration is very easy and the reporting is good."
"What we like about QRadar and the models that IBM has, is it can go from a small-to-medium enterprise to a larger organization, and it gives you the same value."
"I have found the most important features to be the flexibility, tech framework, and disk manager."
"I like that it's easy to use and the performance is good."
 

Cons

"One area that needs improvement is the limited visibility due to the licensing structure. For more visibility, customers need the advantage or premier licensing, which involves additional costs."
"If we have a list of domains we need to block, such as 4,000 domains, I can only block 100 domains at a time because if I put in more than 100 domains, I hit that 2,000 character max and can't continue with an investigation. Being able to put in all 4,000 domains, without a character limit or observable limit, would make doing those case books a whole lot easier and blocking those domains a whole lot easier too."
"Cisco XDR can be improved by addressing the upfront cost. Everything matters for us since we're small, mom and pop, so every dollar counts."
"When we first started with Cisco XDR in August, everybody was having issues. There were three people in our organization, including me, who couldn't even log in to Cisco XDR."
"They need to provide better pricing and bundle XDR licenses with products like Meraki solutions or Firepower Threat Defense."
"My only complaint about Cisco XDR is related to licensing, which is complicated."
"I would say I got to stop beta testing myself."
"Cisco XDR can be improved by addressing the upfront cost."
"There are reports that I would like to generate that are either not included, or I cannot find."
"I'd like them to improve the offense. When QRadar detects something, it creates what it calls offenses. So, it has a rudimentary ticketing system inside of it. This is the same interface that was there when I started using it 12 years ago. It just has not been improved. They do allow integration with IBM Resilient, but IBM Resilient is grotesquely expensive. The most effective integration that IBM offers today is with IBM Resilient, which is an instant response platform. It is a very good platform, but it is very expensive. They really should do something with the offense handling because it is very difficult to scale, and it has limitations. The maximum number of offenses that it can carry is 16K. After 16K, you have to flush your offenses out. So, it is all or nothing. You lose all your offenses up until that point in time, and you don't have any history within the offense list of older events. If you're dealing with multiple customers, this becomes problematic. That's why you need to use another product to do the actual ticketing. If you wanted the ticket existence, you would normally interface with ServiceNow, SolarWinds, or some other product like that."
"They should provide more manual examples online so that I can learn it myself."
"I think QRadar is very complex. It's a distributed system and IBM QRadar has an all-in-one solution which is not like that distributed solution but it's a good product. IBM needs to consider the user interface because if we compare it with AlienVault, the AlienVault user interface is fantastic but the IBM QRadar user interface is very complex. They should focus on how to make it easier for the client."
"The solution lacks some maturity."
"The product does not have a team for investigating malware."
"IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics could improve machine learning use cases because they are limited and most of the use cases are rule-based. They should develop more use cases, such as in Securonix or Exabeam because they will detect a threat. Using machine learning is mainly on the correlation rules, but if you think about Exabeam or Securonix, they detect using machine learning or machine learning-based algorithms."
"The dashboard and reports are not user-friendly or efficient so are of little help with threat hunting activity."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing of Cisco XDR is a bit complicated. The cost can depend on what it is, and the process can be a little complicated."
"The license is not subscription-based."
"Only enterprise businesses can afford the tool."
"The price of this solution is a little high."
"There is a license to use this solution, which is paid annually. However, there are subscription options available."
"I think that the price is fair, but we can always say that the price could be cheaper."
"The solution is costly and the price differs depending on the vendor you use."
"It could be cheaper, but the value itself is far more important for us than the price. Typically, our clients have yearly subscriptions."
"I think my company pays for the license yearly."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solutions are best for your needs.
872,837 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

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Jun 28, 2015
Qradar vs. ArcSight
Continuing with the SIEM posts we have done at Infosecnirvana, this post is a Head to head comparison of the two Industry leading SIEM products in the market – HP ArcSight and IBM QRadar Both the products have consistently been in the Gartner Leaders Quadrant. Both HP and IBM took over niche SIEM…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business90
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise103
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco XDR?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing has been intriguing. I used to work for a Cisco partner, and I still have friends there with whom I discuss comparisons regarding some hardwar...
What needs improvement with Cisco XDR?
To improve Cisco XDR, I can't think of anything super meaningful because a couple of features I'm interested in are actually ones that integrate with Duo, but that's not widely used. I'm fine with ...
What is your primary use case for Cisco XDR?
My primary use case for Cisco XDR is log review from devices, and then doing analytics for quicker responses in the future to security incidents.
What are the biggest differences between Securonix UEBA, Exabeam, and IBM QRadar?
It mostly depends on your use-cases and environment. Exabeam and Securonix have a stronger UEBA feature set, friendlier GUI and are not licensed based on capacity (amount of logs and information in...
What SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Security QRadar?
The pricing, setup cost, or licensing with IBM Security QRadar was costly. It was costly mainly for the things we used to use it for. The customers used to pay the price, but it was one of the prob...
 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco XDR vs. IBM Security QRadar and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,837 professionals have used our research since 2012.